Of course the thing that alerted me to this story was the use of bamboo flooring. But, there are other additions to the project which made me take notice – tankless water heaters, and drought-resistant plants added for landscaping. A trend I’m seeing is that the idea that every region is different, and that building with the characteristics of a region in mind is an underlying commonality when it comes to building green. In my post about the sustainable house in Seattle for instance, the design there took advantage of heavy rainfall by incorporating a ‘rain harvesting’ system. Here, it’s all about making room for droughts. This illustrates the point that one size does not fit all when it comes to building green.

And once again, I think this reveals that the evolution of the construction industry is moving toward sustainability, not as a fad, but as a goal that is as much of a learning process as it is a finished result. If you’re reading Colin Laughlan’s blog about green building and all of the ins and outs of it, you’ll realize that the green building movement is very much in flux, with best practices and standards developing as things roll forward. And even here in this article, it’s admitted by the developer that with this, their first project, they are “still educating themselves on the whole process.”

There are many benefits to green building it seems to me. And one of the biggies is that complacency no longer has as much of a place.